Legal & General to cut 1,000 jobs by mid-2027

Legal & General plans to cut 1,000 jobs by the middle of next year, about a tenth of the British insurance and pensions firm’s workforce.

António Simões, the chief executive, is wielding the axe as part of his attempts to create a “leaner organisation” since taking over from longtime CEO Nigel Wilson in January 2024. L&G described the move as “the next stage of that transformation”.

The London-headquartered firm told staff on Wednesday that it had begun moves to eliminate about 1,000 roles by mid-2027, which had first been reported by Bloomberg News. Most of L&G’s 10,000 employees are based in the UK.

The programme will initially involve voluntary redundancies in the UK but L&G will consider mandatory job cuts depending on the take-up.

The fund management division, which oversees £1.2tn in assets, is excluded as it has its own restructuring plan.

Simões, who previously worked for Santander and HSBC, announced a sharper focus on L&G’s booming pensions arm in June 2024 and reduced the group’s four businesses to three, by merging its asset management divisions. It sold several “non-strategic” assets, the biggest of which was the housebuilder Cala Homes, along with legacy land and real estate.

He also brought in a new executive team and pledged to return more than £5bn to shareholders between 2025 and 2027 through dividends and share buybacks.

Simões told employees in an email: “Over the past two and a half years, we have made significant progress executing our strategy, simplifying L&G, establishing three core businesses, and creating a more focused business.

“However, over the last decade, different structures, processes and ways of working have developed across L&G, making us more complex than we need to be… we need to change how we work today and, through this, become a leaner organisation.”

An L&G spokesperson said the changes “will help us focus our resources and investment on the areas where we see the strongest opportunities for long-term growth”. They added: “We recognise and take seriously the impact on colleagues and are committed to supporting our people throughout the process and consulting with our unions.”

The company expects £500bn of transactions in the UK pensions market over the next decade, as employers transfer their old defined benefit pension plans to insurers. It said it was also benefiting from strong auto-enrolment of staff in their companies’ pension schemes, with around £1bn of new inflows each month.